A critical review of local and world news. This blog originally commented on the Moncton Times and Transcript but has enlarged its scope.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Dec.17: The good ship Irving press sinks lower.

I haven't look at TV
in years. So I bought a set some months ago. Now, I spend every
supper flicking . through some 300 channels to find something –
almost anything. Professional wrestling has become unspeakably corny.
It's been fake since the 1920s, but never so obviously fake and
absurd as it is now. And it must take a person of very low
intelligence to watch “martial arts” which consists of tripping
somebody, and then pounding his face into the canvas. Then there's
dart-throwing and poker and, unbelievably, there are people who watch
bingo on TV.

The news is not much
better. TV is just not a good medium for news. The only programmes
I've found that I can watch at all are Thomas the Tank Engine and
Just for Laughs Gags.

For news, you need to focus and to think. TV works against those. TV
is mostly about changing colours and moving shapes. That gets in the
way of thinking. That's why the camera changes angle so often –
because changing colours an angles is all that TV is about. If you
write for a newspaper or do radio, people remember you, what you were
talking about, and often think they know you personally. TV has no
such effect. I guess that's why it's called a boob tube. (Too bad all
the Moncton private radio stations have no, serious news – and very
little talk radio.

The Irving press?
Sigh! The front page story, the wow! News of the day, is that the
Oland trial has gone to the jury. They have run a story about this
trial every day since it started. Why? The only possible reason is
that the name is associated with a popular brewery. This is the
cheapest sort of brainless sensationalism.

And that's why it's
the big headline in the Irving press. These newspapers are designed,
quite seriously, to keep people in ignorance of what's happening in
the world.

The other, big story for people who 'need to know' is on A6. A
supermarket has run out of a brand of chips. But fear not. It will
have a new supply this weekend.

The editorial and
Norbert have nothing to say. The editorial says we have to review our
water/sewer tax rates. Yeah. I've been worried about that. Norbert
tells us we should privatize much of our road maintenance though, as
he says, that would be more expensive than it is now. It's moaning
column that tells us nothing useful.

Rod Allen has a
column. 'nuff said. The guest column is yet another one from that
propaganda mill for the rich, The Fraser Institute.

Alec Bruce makes sense with this column that the Senate should be
made non-partisan. But I don't see how that's going to be done
without radical change to the constitution. From the start, the
Senate has been a last reward for political hacks. With rare
exceptions, the senators have been lazy, ignorant, biased – and
thieving.

Canada&World
actually leads with an important story. “National Health group
expresses concern about Cleary dismissal”. Notably, it's about the
association of Physicians FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. In other words, this
is a group that almost certainly knows why Dr. Cleary was fired.

The Irving press
should be asking questions of the person who is most likely to know
what all this is about – Mr. Irving.

It is disgraceful
that a province has not demanded answers about this. And, if it
proves to have to do with forest sprays and their dangers, then the
person doing the spraying is a disgrace to humanity for greed and the
jeopardizing of human lives for profit.

There's a big story
that says Trudeau can't compel the Pope to apologize for the church's
treatment of native children in its residential schools. Well, of
course he can't. The Pope isn't a Canadian citizen. And a compelled
apology is useless. What a stupid story to run!

Then, there's the
hot international news on B5. It seems the top google searches of
2015 in Canada were on the federal election, and the Blue Jays.

B6 has the mandatory
photo page of awkward people holding up giant cheques. Whoo! All our
social problems are solved.

Oh, there is one international story worth reading. “Russian
airstrikes restore Syrian military power, help push diplomacy:
analysts” It's actually important. I don't know how it slipped past
the editors.

There are probably
more countries at war today than were in World War Two. I've lost
track of the numbers, but the countries who claim now to be fighting
ISIS must number fifty, at least. ISIS must be flattered to have
attracted so much attention. Imagine – the U.S., Russia, Turkey,
Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, all those
Arab states feel threatened by a relatively small army with no air
force or navy. And it's taking those combined armies which must have
at least 2 million soldiers and the biggest airforces and navies in
the world to fight it.

And ISIS has been
getting substantial help from some of them, notably Turkey and Saudi
Arabia. And ISIS owes its origins to the U.S.

And they all have
different reasons for fighting ISIS. The U.S. is fighting ISIS
because it has to, now. Before, it preferred to let ISIS fight Syria
and to kill president Assad. But Russia spoiled that by actually
fighting ISIS. And the only reason the U.S. and Russia are in this at
all is because each wants control of middle east oil. Turkey is in
this because it wants to take a large slice of Syria, and it wants to
kill every Kurd within reach. Britain, France Germany and Canada are
there to kiss up to the U.S. to maintain their status as colonies of
the American Empire. (Incidentally, when is Trudeau going to keep
his promise to withdraw our air force?) Israel is cooperating
because it wants Palestine and a large piece of Lebanon.

So far, we have
killed at least a couple of million Muslims, largely civilians,
destroyed whole nations, driven millions out as refugees, orphaned
uncounted children. The destruction we've caused to make oil
billionaires happy will be a blight on this world for generations.
It's a story of unspeakable murder and destruction.

But that's okay.

Muslims are bad.
They aren't gentle and peace-loving like us. So they have to be
killed. They're so evil that some of them killed several dozen,
innocent Americans in California. Americans would never do something
like that, not in California. Unless, of course, they're California
police officers keeping America safe.

It's hard to write
in any sensible way about a world that is insane. Worse, insanity is
normal, human behaviour. The ability to hate and fear – and to
murder by the millions – is something easily taught to a whole
population. The ability to be blind to our own murdering and greed is
just as normal.

Islam has nothing to do with this. Christianity has nothing to do
with this (except to make us Christians self-righteous even as we
murder children.) This is all greed and indifference to human
suffering. It's a greed nurtured by a small number of the very
wealthy who suck us into it through the news media they own and the
politicians they own. We buy into it because, in our pride and
ignorance, we believe that we are superior to people who look
different from us. That's the history of the last 500 years of
British, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and American empires –
greed, cruelty, exploitation, and self-righteousness. And it was the
foundation of Hitler's naziism.
And the greedy will just as happily exploit
and destroy us. In fact, they've always done it, and they always will
– as long as we let them.

I notice that the
Irving press seems to think that David Suzuki is no longer worth
reading. The Guardian thinks differently.

The Irving press has
computers, and their computers can surely find The Guardian. How
come the editors don't seem to have known about the story below that
has some considerable meaning for New Brunswickers?

Then there's this
one by a retired colonel of the U.S. army who held high positions in
the Bush government. He's a pretty good source, and he talks about
the disastrously high levels of corruption in American government,
and the disasters of big business control of foreign policy.

The Irving press
missed this one, too. (But it made up for it with its great story
about how a local supermarket will soon re-stock its supply of
chips.)

Then there's this
story about child exploitation in the cocoa business. I really don't
believe it. The business is owned by very, very wealthy people who,
as we know, would never exploit anybody. No. Very rich people are
philanthropic. We have halls of fame for them.

Then there was this
item from Media Co-op sent to me by a reader. It deals largely with
Quebec – but a similar situation exists in New Brunswick. It's
about the political-economic-education interests of closely linked
groups of politicians and the very wealthy. I know a good deal about
the Quebec part, and it's all true. And so far as I've seen, it's
also true of New Brunswick. It really sank into me when I was offered
the presidency of Concordia U. The extent of the rot and manipulation
decided me against it – and has caused me to have a continuing
distrust of senior university administrators – and some professors.

Saudi Arabia is
talking of sending ground troops to fight ISIS. I don't think that
will bother ISIS much. The performance of the Saudi military in Yemen
has been one of the most dismal in history.

And, in other news,
the U.S. Congress has just made a change to government spending and
controls in 2016. It permits American oil companies to export U.S.
crude oil with no controls at all. So much for the Paris Climate
Conference. And Canadian oil seems to be playing the same game. God
bless them for their big-heartedness.

Oh – a suggestion
for any Irving press editor who reads – why not assign a reporter
to do a story on the state of research into glyphosphate? This is a
part of the herbicide that is widely used by the Irvings and others
in New Brunswick. There are nasty stories that Dr. Cleary was fired
as chief medical officer because she was doing research on
glysophate, and Irving wanted her fired.

Now, we know these
nasty stories can't be true because Mr. Irving would never interfere
in government, and would never do anything bad because he's a
Phil-an-throp-ist. So, in the absence of any response from
government, reporters could do a little reading up on glysophate just
to clear things up. They could just got to google and type
g-l-y-p-h-o-s-a-t-e. And then Rod Allen could write one of his
super-cute commentaries on it. And don't worry about that silly,
little word cancer.

Last, in an overlong
post – I wonder how many feel as I do that that Irving press has
actually become worse in the several months? I would have have
thought it possible – but it looks that way. And I hope it is just
a coincidence that this coincides with the appointment of a young
Irving to VP.

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About Me

born into poverty in Montreal. (1933 was a bad year to be born.) Kicked out of school in grade 11. Became factory hand, office boy.
Did a general BA, mostly at night at Sir George Williams University, and partly while a youth worker for YMCA, camps, etc. Then teacher training at McGill.
Taught gradea 7 to 11 for six years. Loved it.
Quit to do MA at Acadia, then PhD (History) at Queen's.
Taught history three years at UPEI, then some 35 years at Concordia U in Montreal.
Loved the teaching. Thought the profs had more pompous and useless asses among then than is really desirable outside a zoo.
work experience:
factory, office,social group work, office,camp director, teacher.
Radio - c. 3000 broadcasts, mostly current events.
TV - many hundred appearances, mostly commentaries.
Film - some writing, advising, voice-overs.
Writing - no count, some hundreds. Some academic, but mostly for popular market, and ranging from short stories to stories to newspaper and magazine columns to history books.
professional speaker - close to 2000.
Awards for the above? yep